Originally Posted by JamesNoBrakes

A large part of flight training is what you make out of it. On the flip side, a lot of students, especially younger OR ones new to aviation, don't really know what to do, what to expect, what is acceptable, etc. When you get to airlines, you get to very regimented programs with expectations that you follow procedure exactly. You do so because it's not just your life and the passengers on the hook, the truth is it's the financial interest of the company. The ones that realize that it's a lot cheaper to not have accidents and lawsuits. They don't want you operating outside of SOP.

Some schools don't really enforce standards or lack standardization. Some of the equipment is so out of date it will not replicate in any way what will be used from that point on. Some of them have the student switch instructors all the time. Some of the instructors just barely meet the instructor qualifications and have very little experience teaching. Other schools have very regimented programs to fill in the inevitable gaps created by inexperienced instructors, with highly structured training for their instructors, highly structured courses, etc. Some of these require you to perform or you will be identified for lack of progress and possibly dropped or recycled. This is usually a lot more of a "chance" than you'll get at an airline, where if you are not making progress, they let you go.

But airplanes are airplanes and in my experience, they flight a lot more the "same" than different. There can be benefit to experiencing different platforms and equipment. There isn't a "right answer" unfortunately. The old tends of thousands of hour mom-and-pop school CFI may not be nearly as up on the modern developments and current material. Or maybe they are. The structured flight school may be "finish as fast as possible" situation where you lose the knowledge just as fast as you gained it, because finishing fast does not mean you actually are going to retain knowledge/experience.

Military simply isn't an option for some. Generally the structure there is excellent, but that's because the structure of the military, officer corps, etc. Everything has to be structured. Military isn't an option often for reasons outside of this, like medical and number of available slots.

When you go to the airline, you have to be ready to be a self-starter, understand the level of knowledge required, be competent with your flows and checklists, etc. They expect you to do a lot or most of this on your own, and then they test you on it. If you were at an unorganized flight school and not really held to the standards or required to perform at an appropriate level, it can quickly overwhelm.